Tag Archives: scottish

One of my favourite parts of attending a film festival is getting to see the more obscure offerings and taking risks on things I might not otherwise see. This year’s Inverness Film Festival saw special screenings of work by two female art film makers: Margaret Tait and Margaret Salman. Other than their shared forenames and being heavily influenced by Italian neo-realism their work has very little in common, but it was interesting to see an overview of both their work and to get a wider context for the changing nature of art film making in Scotland over time.

Blue Black Permanent

I’m not sure quite what I was expecting from Margaret Tait’s only feature film, but this wasn’t it. This was something very different and very special. It’s a dreamy film, about loss and art and grief, an art film in all the best ways. Time and sorrow flows through the film and it’s narrative like waves, ebbing and flowing with Barbara’s remembered grief. Gerda and Barbara’s narrations provide just enough narrative structure to hold the film together, to hold your hand through the dreamlike visuals.

It’s got that peculiar bittersweet and lovely quality of a particular type of Scottish film made in the 1980s and early 90s – for some reason I keep thinking of the opening scenes of Comfort and Joy (Forsyth, 1984) – combined with unashamed art film sensitivities and visuals. Something strange and wonderful.

It also left me with a strange feeling of resentment, that when I was in my early twenties making short films, I never knew she existed. I spent a great deal of time tracking down to watch and reading about the films of John Grierson and the rest of the documentary movement, looking for something and never quite finding it. I suspect it was Margaret Tait I was looking for all along.

Margaret Tait: Film Poems

I wasn’t originally intending to attend this screening, but having been so moved by the previous evening’s screening of her only feature film I squeezed it into my schedule. I’m glad I did though, because they were, almost an object lesson on how to make short art films. I’ve sat through some truly terrible art films in my time and I now see what many of them were striving for and failing to achieve. Film poems is a particularly fitting description for what these are, there’s both a sparseness and a focus on details that feels very poetic. (I’ve been wrestling with Sorley MacLean’s Eimhir recently so it felt oddly fitting to find it referenced here, but it was the little urban details of Edwin Morgan’s poetry that I was reminded of watching these.) There’s an elegiac quality to these films, a deep sense of place and the inevitable, unstoppable passage of time.

I had, in fact, seen one of them before – Portrait of Ga – as part of a screening of shorts by Scottish female film-makers at the festival a couple of years ago. Which is clearly what prompted something in my brain to chime when I saw her name in the programme. I didn’t like all of the films, but the ones that worked – I particularly enjoyed Colour Poems of 1974 – are perfect little capsules of moments in time and the feelings and emotions that go with them.

Cladach and Others

I should say first of all that I did actually like Cladach. It worked effectively as a portrait of Ullapool placing it within its historical, geographical, environmental and cultural context, with a remarkable deftness in the showing not telling department. There was just enough narrative through the ‘found’ sound components to hold the film together and carry the viewer along with it.

However, I struggled somewhat, to greater and lesser extents with the other films in the collection. The films all seemed to start with a clever, or aesthetically pleasing idea and then drag it out that bit too far. Stretching the concept beyond the comfortable endurance of the viewer – presumably intentionally – such that I could feel myself riding the emotional wave from bafflement to enjoyment to impatience into relief at the end. Even Cladach suffers from this a little, as the underwater segment – featuring my new friend the hydrophone – was gorgeous and almost ethereal, but just went on too long. The tonal shift from the rest of the film was too abrupt to sustain itself.

I wanted to like these films more than I did, but it felt like the films were almost actively working against that.

I did intend to see both sets of short documentaries that were showing at the Inverness Film Festival this year, but circumstances conspired against me. (I did, however, get a lovely walk in the Autumnal sunshine yesterday morning as compensation.) Handily, the screening that I did see was the one that contained almost all of the short documentaries I was most interested in seeing. If I could only see one of the screenings, I’m glad it was this one.

The first documentary in the collection is a little slice of life film, about people learning to be bell ringers at St Andrews Cathedral in Inverness. It’s an interesting enough little piece as it is, but mostly it made me want a documentary more about the history of the bell ringers, I wanted more than anything to know more. It also reminded me that a couple of years ago I started some research work, towards making a radio documentary about the Bell Ringers at Dunblane Cathedral – now I really want to make that documentary!

Dear Peter is, I think, the third of Scott Willis’ documentaries that I’ve seen now – he worked at Eden Court for a while which sort of makes him a local film-maker – so I’m starting to recognise his style of film-making. They tend to focus on an interesting character that Scott’s met – and they tend to stand or fall based on the nature of the friendship that forms between film-maker and subject. This one works really well, I found it compelling and lovely, perhaps most of all because I’m also the sort of person who, if they found a collection of art postcards in a bookshop – all addressed to the one person – would want to track that person down and interview them.

The shortest film in the collection – Sheepo is probably the film that I would most whole-heartedly recommend. There’s not a lot to it and it’s certainly not going to change the world, but it was by a long way, the most fun. It was brilliantly shot, did nice things with sound and had an engaging and amusing protagonist and subject. Who knew competitive sheep shearing could be so much fun?

I’m not sure why I like documentaries about boat building, but I really love documentaries about boat building. There’s just something about the type of person who is willing to spend the time to hand build a wooden boat that seems to make them a compelling subject for a documentary and this one was full of those people. Young and old, male and female – and quite frankly the lassie from Plockton neatly articulated everything I love about woodworking – the sense of community, of building something together, something greater than themselves oozed out of every moment of this film.

With the Rising Tide is a gorgeous lyrical film, with an interesting approach to sound. (Even if said sound did make the sound designer in me twitch to get at the sound mix to mellow out some of the more jarring audio cuts.)

Handily for my Nablopomo aspirations, this month does appear to be filled with interesting events for me to write about. Which does make me wonder, is autumn a particularly good season for the arts in Inverness or have I missed all sorts of gems other months because I wasn’t hunting for blog material? Clearly I need to be paying more attention…

It’s the Inverness Film Festival this week! No, until a month ago, I didn’t know they had one either but they do and this year is in fact the 13th Inverness Film Festival. The theme this year is those “who are brave enough to move away from their comfort zones and embark on an adventure, whether that be by choice or circumstance.” Given that moving to Inverness in the first place was about leaving my comfort zone and seeking adventure, it feels particularly fitting to me that this one should be the first I got to attend.

Early mornings at film festivals are usually the territory of short films, and the IFF is no exception. Short films from the UK, short films from around the world, short films for kids of different ages and, most relevant to my interests, short documentaries.

Half the films in the selection were products of the Scottish Documentary Institutes’ Bridging the Gap initiative and the correlation between those and my favourites in the screening was pretty close. They were all really interesting and different documentaries, which is something I associate with – and value in – the output of the SDI. Embarrassingly I was late and missed the first film in the screening, so I’ll stick to talking about my favourites of the films I did see rather than reviewing them all.

Mining Poems or Odes

This was the film that least caught my fancy in the program but which utterly captured my imagination and heart in the screening. The central concept of the film a poet and ex-Shipyard welder, Robert, talks about how being a welder shaped his writing, his worldview and his relationship with words and philosophy. The film is poetic and mesmerising, and Robert’s words and screen presence are compelling – that face, that voice, those words – I could have listened to him for hours. His descriptions are economic but paint vivid pictures of a world lost and an education at the hands of a type of men that seem to have vanished with it. Big burly men, of few words, who taught him to weld and badgered him into reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and Das Kapital, who swung great big hammers for fun but could put more care into asking ‘alright son?’ than other people put into saying ‘I love you’. For all that the film is presented in quite a stylistic fashion, it feels more honest and authentic to its subject than many a more earnest documentary.

Is a charming wee film about the Banana Flats – officially Cables Wynd estate – in Leith. It follows a photographer who grew up in the flats, as he works on a photography project, documenting the people who live in the flats now. It’s a film about community and what home means to different people. (Also the idiosyncrasies of flat numbering, I spent enough of my childhood traipsing up and down blocks of council flats leafleting with my dad to truly appreciate the frustration and triumph of their search for flat 69!) It’s a slight film, without any great pretensions of grand messages, just a slice of life – lives that those who don’t live them seldom see. Which to me, is the core of what documentary, especially in short form, should be about.

United We Will Swim…Again

This was probably the film in the selection that I was most interested to see. It follows the long-running campaign to save the Calder Street baths in Glasgow. The longest film in the selection at 26 minutes, it nonetheless felt about half its length, packing in 100 years of history and 13 years of activism. For the uninitiated, back in 2001 Glasgow City Council decided to close the public baths in Govanhill. They were a popular and well-used public service, the focal point for a lot of community activity both water based and not, and in the wake of the closure of many local amenities it became the line in the sand that the community rallied round and said no more closures. In many ways it’s a heart-warming tale of a diverse community (traditionally it has been a working class and immigrant community, one of the interviewees claims it as one of the most diverse communities outside of London) coming together to protest and campaign. Of a community buy out of a local amenity to return it to its proper role as a central community hub. Of their on-going campaign to be able to afford to use them as an actual swimming pool again. But it’s also a story of institutional greed and power corrupting officials. The aerial footage of the mounted police officers advancing on protesters sitting in the street, tells its own story. Over and over during the film, especially during the section about the removal of the protesters occupying the baths, I wondered why? What made the council so fixated on closing the Govanhill Baths? In the face of the campaigning and protesting, why were they so set on closing an amenity so well-loved by its community that they would organise sit-ins and marches, would practically riot in the streets to keep it? What did they even use the money they got for selling it for? Because it certainly wasn’t improving the substandard housing that makes a Victorian bathhouse remain necessary for its original purpose in the 21st century. There’s scope for a longer and more in depth film about the wider issues, because you can’t help but wonder how many other communities – especially in these less economically sunny times – have lost their vital amenities in quieter and less well-known battles.

It’s a long way to go for a swim, but if they do get the pools open again, I think I’ll be making the effort nonetheless.

After many years of trying and failing to get to a screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival – the films I want to see are always sold out by the time I find out about them – and much juggling of the diary to find something that I wanted to see, was on at a time I wasn’t at work and wasn’t sold out, I finally made it to a screening. A screening of short, Scottish, documentaries which regular readers of this blog may identify as being pretty close to everything I want in a film screening. The screening was organised by the Scottish Documentary Institute. For those, like myself, who’d never heard of them before, they’re a research centre based at Edinburgh College of Art specialising in training, production and distribution of documentaries since their founding in 2004. The films screened were all the products of this year’s Bridging the Gap initiative – a new talent initiative where four Scottish-based filmmakers are commissioned to make a 10 minute documentary, receiving training and support along the way from development to post-production. In previous years all the films have been based around a theme, but this was the first year when the filmmakers hadn’t been given a theme, and yet they all seemed to have a theme despite that; of men in isolation.

Polaris (Chico Pereira)Polaris is set amongst the Filipino community in Fraserburgh, and in particular on the trawler from which the film takes its name. The use of sound and equally of silence is brilliant, at times the sounds of the ship feel like a physical presence. It’s a contemplative and poetic piece with minimal dialogue, following the lives of the crew both on board and on shore without telling a particular ‘story’. Instead mediating on ideas of isolation and companionship, leaving the audience wanting to know more about the community into which we get the briefest of snapshots.

Pouters (Paul Fegan)Pouters on the other hand is a film about the idiosyncratic and apparently ancient sport of Doo Fleein. Put aside your images of men in flat caps racing pigeons, this sport requires far more, cunning, dedication and sheer bloody minded trickery than its more refined cousin. This is a film about a 25 year rivalry, an all-consuming passion and a really obscure sport. The characters are charming and larger than life; the humour both broad and subtle. Not a lot happens in the film but there’s plenty of dramatic tension nonetheless, and maybe a wee bit of an insight into the West of Scotland sports fan mentality in there too.

In Search of the Wallaby (Alasdair Bayne/Andrew O’Connor)In Search of the Wallaby is probably the weakest of the three films, mainly because, by the filmmakers own admission, the film is torn between what it wants to be. Back in 2004 a Wallaby was mysteriously found dead on Islay, how it got there in first place and what killed it was never resolved. The film starts as an X-files-style investigation into the mystery and runs into a dead end pretty quickly, and ends up as film about a young farmer with the Wallaby as a somewhat inadequate metaphor for his feelings about his life on the island. I couldn’t help feeling there was a far better film in there somewhere and it was a shame they hadn’t had the freedom to ditch the failed idea and more fully develop the more interesting one.

Takeaway (Yu-Hsueh Lin)Takeaway is the most solitary of the films, quite an achievement given the company it found itself screened in. It follows a Chinese Takeaway delivery driver on his rounds one night and his musings on his job, his life in Scotland, the city and how much of a different world it becomes at night, takes us on a journey through an Edinburgh that is at once familiar and utterly alien. The cinematography of the world outside the fishbowl world of the car reflects this, the shooting creating a distorted world that is both intimidating and tempting.

So this was intended as a blog project for the tail end of 2010 and we are now three months into 2011, so I think its time to admit defeat and focus on other things. However, I’ve had one post written (intended to be the tenth post) for ages so I’m sharing this one with you before I put the project entirely to bed.

Sneaking in right at the end of 2010 come Conquering Animal Sounds. This band are my ‘one to watch’ for 2011. I don’t predict towering chart success or sold out stadiums in this band’s near future. Their music is unlikely to have mass appeal or to turn up in the ‘big in 2011’ section in any mainstream newspaper. However, in the strange and beautiful genre they inhabit, they look set to gain a loyal and devoted following, although they’d probably strongly deny that, given their apparent fondness for defying genre altogether.

Conquering Animal Sounds are a duo central-belt based – conflicting reports claim their base as both Glasgow and Edinburgh – composed of Anneke Kampman on vocals, loops and harp and James Scott on guitars, loops and beats. Their debut album was due for release in early February and they are currently on tour around the UK.

I was a bit torn when I was making my list of ten bands to sum up the music of 2010; I wanted to finish with something completely different from what came before. I gave serious consideration to both eagleowl and The French Quarter. eagleowl were just about in the lead, based solely on how often I’ve played them on the radio – though The French Quarter really ought to have notched up more airplay given that they’re from Tillicoultry and therefore pretty much count as ‘local boys’. Progressive, ambient, post-rock, whatever you like to call that genre, they were both bands I enjoyed but not ones that skelped the listener round the lugs and said ‘listen to me I’m something different’. I hadn’t really considered Conquering Animal Sounds at that point, I’d only heard their song Wildthings and while I thought it was an excellent little tune, I a) hadn’t heard anything else by them to tell if it was a one off and b) it seemed a bit too experimental. A bit too ‘out there’. I enjoy a bit of experimental electronica in my life, but I appreciate that not everyone does. Then, however, I heard their single from the tale end of 2010 ‘Bear’.

With Bear, they seem to have created the perfect balance between the rich, intriguing – at times experimental – trip hop of the instrumental elements with the gorgeous vocals. There are loops and twists of sound, seemingly abstract electronic noises and lovely bits of instrumentation coming together to create a stunning sound-scape that is electronica at it’s purest and most stunning. I don’t think they’re going to be big, but I do think they’re going to be brilliant.

Next up in the 10 for 2010 series we have the excellent Sunrise not Secular, admittedly not the catchiest of band names, but I like to think it probably sounds better in Gaelic. Either way they are very much in the tradition of celtic rock bands of the eighties and nineties, all sweeping choruses, driving drums and distinctive guitar riffs. In fact Fon Sgiath from 2009’s An Dealbh Mhòr (The Big Picture) EP has an opening riff that wears its Big Country influences on its sleeve, and I suppose if I had to sum the band up to someone in five words they would be: ‘Think Big Country in Gaelic’. Which admittedly wouldn’t be entirely accurate as they do sing in English too, dividing both their EPs between Gaelic and English language tunes, but all their best tunes are in Gaelic so it sort of works.

Sunrise not Secular hail from Stornoway on Lewis and after touring around Europe last year, played their last gig at the Barra Festival and broke up in June of 2010. I was a bit disappointed when I made my list for this project to discover that only one band who sing in Gaelic had made the list, but I wrote about Na Gathan and Niteworks earlier in the year when I was talking about the Rapal new Gaelic song competition. Given that SNS were my favourite of the bands I discovered through the Rapal competition and they only got a passing mention from me back then, they deserve their wee moment in the sun now.

Farewell boys, you were pretty much gone by the time you ear wormed your way into my affections but you left behind some mighty good tunes for us to remember you by.

I must confess that it was the name of the band that sparked my initial interest in this band. Given the name of this blog I couldn’t resist a name like that, so when I listened to recent single Homebound for the first time I was hugely relieved. I wasn’t going to have to love them ironically just because of the name, they were actually rather good.

Edinburgh based band, Penguins Kill Polar Bears were a late addition to the list, and had to fight pretty hard against The Scottish Enlightenment for a place on it. If I’d been doing singles rather than bands in general then it could well have gone the other way, as Little Sleep is probably a better song than Homebound, but I think at the heart of it is my conviction that Penguins Kill Polar Bears have a greater potential. To be something more than critically acclaimed and obscure, or briefly famous and quickly forgotten. Or maybe just ambition, there’s something about the scale of their songs that makes me think of stadiums and festival headliners. A band who have previously played surrounded in flames – and made it look quite cool – are not one that are likely afraid to make a big statement. From the rest of their songs its clear they aren’t anywhere near ready for that yet, but there’s something in Homebound that speaks of the potential to write the sort of epic anthems that I associate with Snow Patrol at their best. The rest of the songs on the album indicate that they’ve still got a ways to go until they’re quite ready for that sort of thing, but the potential is there. It might take a while to get there but I for one will be watching their progress with interest.

Here in fact is a video of them playing Homebound at the aforementioned flamey gig, though in this video it looks like the flames are on screens behind them rather than being surround by actual flames. All power to whoever did the visuals for this gig, in some of the other videos from it, the stage does actually look as though its on fire.

Julia and the Doogans were another early discovery for me this year. I owe AyeTunes a wee tip of the head for these folks, as it was his flagging up of a free gig at the Mill back in March that introduced me to the joys of this band. I’ve seen them a couple of times this year and they always seem to be supporting the least likely bands. Most notably I saw them in the University of Stirling student union supporting Blind Wolves who a) could not have been more different if they tried and b) are a bit rubbish. Which I do appreciate is pretty close to sacrilege in some circles if what I hear from my former compatriots at Air3 radio (probably not still claiming to be ‘Straight Out of Cornton’ these days) is true, but I suspect the contrast with Julia’s gorgeous voice beforehand did them no favours. Though speaking of former Air3 Radio compatriots I did have a surreal moment when listening to the Scotland Introducing podcast during the summer and instead of Vic Galloway’s dulcet tones I was greeted with an entirely different but equally familiar voice. “That’s never that Ally McRae!” says I, but lo and behold it was. I hear he’s one of the folks behind Detour Scotland but I still can’t get past the fact that a voice I used to hear 1350AM will soon be on 99.5 FM…

Anyway enough pointless nostalgia and back to the band. There’s something strangely appealing about the ensemble format, of songs that can be stripped down to just a guitar and a xylophone if necessary or expanded out to something almost orchestral in the rich mix of sounds blending together when all members are present. Listening to them recorded, it’s hard to imagine Come Home or New York City without their cello line and yet they work without it. Oft times the flautist gets a little lost in the blend of the recording, but on stage the flute makes a vital contribution. Perhaps its something about Julia’s voice itself, pure and beautiful, providing a consistent through-line on which the other elements and instruments can be hung or removed as required by practicalities. Perhaps that’s why they work as a ‘and the’ band where others don’t, each of the ‘Doogans’ providing something special to create a richer sound, with Julia’s voice tying them all together to make a coherent whole.

They do a nice line in rather cute home-made music videos, I personally have a soft spot for the little pigs of Maps of the World, but appreciate most people prefer the aesthetic of the videos for New York and their gorgeous cover of The Scientist, so it’s the video for the former that I’m sharing today. It could be quite a sad song when you think about it but the video keeps the tone whimsically bittersweet and oddly hopeful.

Frightened Rabbit were my first new musical discovery of 2010, based on a throw away mention in something completely unrelated of ‘some obscure Scottish indie band’. I know, I know, I’m ridiculously late to the party with that band but it was these guys that made me realise how out of touch with new music I’d got and how much good stuff I was missing out on.

My affection for this band managed to be both really obvious and to completely sneak up on me. It must have been just before they released The Winter of Mixed Drinks; because I remember watching a sampler video thing of songs from that album and thinking they were good. At the time I described them to someone as ‘a band that I think I could love the way I love Idlewild, abstractly but loyally, always intending to get round to buying an album and only having seen them live by accident’. I had no idea how wrong I was.

The Midnight Organ Fight, is a very different album to their latest effort, and it was this that pushed them from ‘band I enjoy’ to ‘band I love’ status and has kept them in my top five most listened to bands all year. It’s an album that inspires a very intense, almost visceral emotional reaction in me, that makes me I wish I owned it in about third year of uni. Keep Yourself Warm and Poke are the two songs that grabbed my attention first by dint of pretty much grabbing me by the heart and dragging me back in time six or so years, and reminding me how it feel to have your heart ripped out. There’s a strange mix of sweetness, sadness, rage, bitterness and resignation in the songs, wrapped up in lyrics that are at once quirky and almost shockingly raw. Then, in the second last song, after all the loss and rage that came before, comes Floating in the Forth probably the most hopeful song written about feeling suicidal. If the album as a whole, tips you over, rearranges your thoughts and rips your heart out, that song comes along, gives you a reassuring hug and tells you that you’ve survived, you’re stronger now and that it gets better from here on in.

I’m still inclined to think that The Winter of Mixed Drinks, is a more mature/grown up record, the songs are certainly more radio-friendly and easier to demonstrate their excellence to other people with. Maybe it’ll even be the album that makes everyone else realise how awesome they are and in five years their sold out Glasgow gigs will be at Hamden rather than the Barrowlands; maybe my initial impression was correct and they’ll chug along at an Idlewild level of success for the next decade; maybe they’ll disappear back into obscurity. Whatever happens, here and now, they’ve got some excellent tunes.

As an added bonus, here’s a wee trip to Pepperland (animated music videos, how I love thee), courtesy of the video for Bright Pink Bookmark.